In all criminal trials, it is the state apparatus, and the power that such a governmental entity has v. the person so accused of a given crime. That is to say, individuals accused of a crime, who are far too often impoverished and ill-educated, must somehow defend themselves, through a plea bargain or through an overworked and overburdened public defender mounting a defense for them, unless they have the monetary funds to afford a competent attorney -- against the mighty policing arm of the state, which has virtually unlimited power on its end, versus that which is typically limited in all of its resources, along with the salient fact, that most defendants are not truly knowledgeable about the law, the nuances and application thereof, and have little experience in the arguing of law as involving their particular case.
For a country that seemingly is for the underdog and for fair opportunity, clearly, criminal trials are indicative that America through its jurisprudence doesn’t really care about equality or fairness under the law, but rather utilizes the law as a cudgel against those that are perceived to be violating the law, or not adhering to community standards, or are some sort of nuisance which needs to be punished by that law. The proof of this is by the very nature of how criminal law is practiced in America, in which the prosecutor and law enforcement, typically work together, hand in glove, and the judge, oftentimes, isn’t impartial, whatsoever; but more serves to validate under the guise of justice, the general arc of what the prosecution is trying to accomplish.
The bottom line is that the generic police motto of “to protect and to serve” is disingenuous, for that protection is for those that are the power brokers and adjudicators of a given community, and thereby this signifies that the service so done by the police is for those elites, and thereby, police officers understand that real police work is the actual keeping of the general public, and especially all those that are annoying and disenfranchised, in their place. So too, the prosecution knows that its purpose is to take those police actions so made and to make good on them, by first specifically targeting all those that are pretty much defenseless and clueless, so as to pad their prosecutorial record to make it appear as if they are unbeatable; and next to concentrate upon all those that have the temerity to believe that in America, justice is going to be fair, by teaching all those recalcitrant people, that the state will get what it wants, through its deeper pockets, connections, and the general twisting of the rules, so that the fight will never be fair, and will invariably result in the vast majority of cases being won by that prosecution.
The power of the government is something to be rightly feared, for it is only that government thru its instruments that can rightly accused anyone of a given crime, and once so accused, life as it once was known by those so suffering that fate, becomes, at best, difficult and inconvenienced; and at worse, the wresting away of one’s freedom for incarceration, punishment, and shaming. They say that this is the land of the free, but reality of its jurisprudence and the results thereof, proves nothing of the sort.